Trump, Russia, & General Flynn

by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 15, 2017

During the drip drip of Watergate, every time President Richard Nixon seemed about to survive drowning, a new tsunami struck. Every time President Bill Clinton seemed about to float out of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, another wave of bimbos hit. Now that a relentless flood of leaks from our intelligence agencies has swept away President Trump’s national security advisor General Michael Flynn, the question is whether the water is also rising around others in the inner circle.

Damp metaphors aside, President Donald Trump’s scandal involving his Administration’s relations with Russian secret agents is deeply troubling and raises questions this humble correspondent cannot answer. Is there really a Russian dossier containing damaging evidence of misconduct by businessman Trump during his Miss Universe visit to Moscow in 2013?

Was there coordination between Candidate Trump and the ruthless regime of Vladimir Putin during the election campaign? Was there a secret agreement that went beyond Mr. Trump’s boisterously public call for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails? Did the Trump campaign and the KGB conspire to destroy her candidacy? If they did, is it illegal? Put another way is it a cancer on the Trump Presidency?

If you voted for Donald Trump, the answer you are hoping for is no, no, no, no, no and no. If you hate this President and believe his election is illegitimate, then you want every grotesque conspiracy to be true. You want him to be revealed as the Manchurian President, dancing to the evil Putin’s every push and pull, and for this scandal to fester and rot and bring him down or at least deny him and the GOP success in upcoming elections.

We don’t know what we don’t know, like whether General Flynn and possibly others in the Trump Administration said to Kremlin operatives not to worry about anything President Barack Obama said. If the General or someone else in the Trump camp did undermine U.S. foreign policy is that okay with you? It is just a creative expansion of rough and tumble, bare-knuckled, take-no-prisoners domestic American politics? Is it merely a practical way to open an effective, informal line of communication with Russia, our long-standing and bitter rival on the world stage? Is it treason?